


Never The Sun On My Face

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9850943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: After reading the first few pages of Harry Potter where Harry still lives in the cupboard under the stairs, Bellamy brings the books home for Octavia. As they read on in the series, both end up wishing he hadn't.





	

Bellamy had sneaked the Harry Potter book home one day, showed it to Octavia when their mother wasn’t looking, knowing that their mother wouldn’t have approved of their reading that instead of the mythology stories they had been brought up on. “I only read the first few pages,” Bellamy began, “But it starts with this kid living in the cupboard under the stairs, he’s someone like you.”

“Is he an illegal second sibling too?” Octavia asked. 

“I don’t think so,” Bellamy replied, and as Octavia read on, disappointment overcame her as she realised that Harry had not been like her after all, but was raised by other family members. And he only slept in the cupboard under the stairs; he was allowed to go to school, and even if he was sometimes dumped on the neighbour called Mrs Figg who he didn’t much like, he still got to leave his cupboard every so often. She understood that she could not have been passed off as a cousin of Bellamy’s, for the one child policy had existed long before her mother’s birth and attention would still have been drawn to the family, but for a moment she imagined what life would have been like if her mother had tried to pass her off as a child of friends whom she had taken in, as Petunia and Vernon Dursley had reluctantly taken in Harry, whether she could have walked the Ark freely as he walked the streets, been able to have friends.

“She couldn’t have gotten away with it,” Bellamy tried to explain when Octavia asked this. “She’d have had to answer a lot of questions about who your parents were supposed to be if she’d tried to register you. The records would have been checked, it would have come out that you weren’t the child of any friends of hers. We wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.”

Octavia could see the truth of this, and decided not to mention it again. But that didn’t stop her from imagining that one day, someone like Hagrid might come marching in to their quarters on the Ark, tell her she was special, and rescue her from her situation. One day, she’d made the mistake of admitting it to Bellamy, and the moment she saw the look on his face, she knew what she had done. “But you have us, Octavia,” Bellamy had said. “We’re your family, and we love you. Harry Potter didn’t have that with Dudley and his aunt and uncle. He was desperate to get away from them.”

Octavia conceded his point that in that respect at least, she was luckier than Harry. Yet still, every time she was forced to hide under the floors when surprise inspection came around, a part of her would always imagine a way that things could be different.

 

Bellamy had to admit he was fascinated by the family called the Weasleys. He couldn’t imagine growing up as one of seven siblings, being able to live openly in a family of that size. 

He had borne this weight on his shoulders for so long now. “She’s your responsibility now.” And he loved Octavia, and he would do whatever it took to make sure she wasn’t taken away and floated. Yet once he had read about the Weasleys, he found himself wondering how his life would have been different if he had been able to publicly acknowledge Octavia as his sister. He wouldn’t have had to lead such an isolated life, instead he’d have been able to have friends over without worrying about Octavia trapped in the cupboard for so much longer than usual, or fear that the friend would somehow stumble on her existence, leading the Guard to come for her. While technically free to roam the Ark, he rarely did, due to his need to keep people at arm’s length. Once, when she was about three years old, Octavia had actually got out trying to follow Bellamy somewhere, and their mother had only just managed to get her back before she was seen. Bellamy had realised it wasn’t worth the risk after that, and had felt forced to stay home unless he was going somewhere necessary.

He’d read about things like Fred turning Ron’s teddy to a spider in retaliation for Ron breaking Fred’s toy broomstick, or Percy showing off about how he was the right hand man of that Minister, Crouch, until the day Crouch had called him Weatherby in front of Fred and George who never let him hear the end of it, and he’d wondered if this was a normal sibling relationship, something he would never see anywhere else. He imagined Bill, the oldest of the lot, being forced to conceal the existence of all six of his siblings, and couldn’t see how it could even be possible, especially with the practical jokers Fred and George, who seemed hardest to control.

Bellamy had never come across a set of identical twins on the Ark. After reading about Fred and George, he’d actually gone to his mother and asked her what happened if anyone ever gave birth to identical twins, whether one would be kept and one given away. He didn’t dare voice the other thought that occurred to him about what could potentially happen. His mother had shut the conversation down and said that it didn’t happen there, before asking what had put the idea into his head. Once he had sheepishly produced the Harry Potter book, his mother had immediately thrown it in the trash, told him he shouldn’t be reading it any more, and there was a part of him that felt relieved. He’d expected tears from Octavia when he broke it to her, but when it came down to it, she looked relieved too.

Neither of them admitted to the other that they secretly thought that Hermione, raised as an only child, was the luckiest of the trio.


End file.
